Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 17 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  13 Many of the excuses used to rationalize trans women’s exclusion are not designed to protect the values of women-only space, but rather to reinforce the idea that trans women are “real” men and “fake” women. For example, one of the most cited reasons that trans women are not allowed in the festival is that we are born with, and many of us still have, penises (many trans women either cannot afford to or choose not to have sex reassignment surgery). It is argued that our penises are dangerous because they are a symbol of male oppression and have the potential to trigger women who have been sexually assaulted or abused by men. So penises are banned from the festival, right? Well, not quite: The festival does allow women to purchase and use dildos, strap-ons, and packing devices, many of which closely resemble penises. So phalluses in and of themselves are not so bad, just so long as they are not attached to a trans woman. Another reason frequently given for the exclusion of trans women from Michigan is that we supposedly would bring “male energy” into the festival. While this seems to imply that expressions of masculinity are not allowed, nothing could be further from the truth. Michigan allows drag king performers who dress and act male, and the festival stage has featured several female-bodied performers who identify as transgender and sometimes describe themselves with male pronouns. 14 Presumably, Lisa Vogel (who is sole proprietor of the festival) allows this because she believes that no person who is born female is capable of exhibiting authentic masculinity or “male energy.” Not only is this an insult to trans men (as it suggests that they can never be fully masculine or male), but it implies that “male energy” can be measured in some way independent of whether the person expressing it appears female or male. This is clearly not the case. Even though I am a trans woman, I have never been accused of expressing “male energy,” because people perceive me as a woman. When I do act in a “masculine” way, people describe me as a “tomboy” or “butch,” and if I get aggressive or argumentative, people call me a “bitch.” My behaviors are still the same; it is only the context of my body (whether people see me as female or male) that has changed. This is the inevitable problem with all attempts to portray trans women as “fake” females (whether media or feminist in origin): They require one to give different names, meanings, and values to the same behaviors depending on whether the person in question was born with a female or male body (or whether they are perceived to be a woman or a man).

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  For one thing, there was my physical transition and the countless social changes I experienced as a result of being perceived as female. But for me, being trans didn’t merely involve learning how to navigate my way through the world as a woman. I have the privilege of being appropriately gendered as female, so in my day-to-day life, when I am forced to come out to someone, nine times out of ten it is not as a transsexual, but as a lesbian. It happens every time somebody asks me if I am seeing someone and I reply, “Actually, I have a wife.” It happens every time Dani and I dare to hold hands or kiss in public. It happens when Dani is not around, but someone assumes that I am a dyke anyway because of the way that I dress, speak, or carry myself.After my transition, I began to write not only about being transgendered, but about my experiences living in the world as a woman and a dyke after years of being perceived as a straight man. Not surprisingly, most of what I wrote had a definite feminist bent. It seemed impossible for me, as a trans woman, to discuss my journey from male to female without placing it in the context of the differing values our society places on maleness and femaleness, on masculinity and femininity.Unfortunately, many people tend to artificially separate feminism from transgender activism, as if they are distinct issues that are in no way related. However, I have found that much of the anti-trans discrimination that trans women come across is clearly rooted in traditional sexism. This can be seen in how the media Powers That Be systematically sensationalize, sexualize, and ridicule trans women while allowing trans men to remain largely invisible. It’s why the tranny sex and porn industries catering to straight-identified men do not fetishize folks on the FTM spectrum for their XX chromosomes or their socialization as girls. No, they objectify trans women, because our bodies and our persons are female. I have found that many female-assigned genderqueers and FTM spectrum trans people go on and on about the gender binary system, as if trans people are only ever discriminated against for breaking gender norms. That might be how it seems when the gender transgression in question is an expression of masculinity. But as someone on the MTF spectrum, I am not dismissed for merely failing to live up to binary gender norms, but for expressing my own femaleness and femininity. And personally, I don’t feel like I’m the victim of “transphobia” as much as I am the victim of trans-misogyny.This idea—that much of what is commonly called transphobia is merely traditional sexism in disguise—moved to the forefront of my mind as I began to be invited to do spoken word performances at various queer women’s events around the San Francisco Bay Area.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Femininity is portrayed as a trick or ruse so that masculinity invariably seems sincere by comparison. For this reason, there are few intellectual tasks easier than artificializing feminine gender expression, because male-centricism purposefully sets up femininity as masculinity’s “straw man” or its scapegoat.As feminists, it’s time for us to acknowledge that this scapegoating of femininity has become the Achilles’ heel of the feminist movement. While past feminists have gone to great lengths to empower femaleness and to tear away all of the negative connotations that have plagued women’s bodies and biology, they have allowed the negative connotations associated with femininity to persist relatively unabated. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that, while most reasonable people see women and men as equals, few (if any) dare to claim that femininity is masculinity’s equal. Indeed, much of what has historically been called misogyny—a hatred of women—has clearly gone underground, disguising itself as the less reprehensible derision of femininity. This new version of misogyny, which focuses more on maligning femininity than femaleness, can be found everywhere. It can be seen in our political discourse, where advocates for the environment, gun control, and welfare are undermined via “guilt by association” with feminine imagery as seen in phrases such as “tree huggers,” “soft on crime,” and pro-“dependency”—where male politicians who exhibit anything other than a two-dimensional facade of hypermasculinity are invariably dismissed by political cartoonists who depict them donning dresses.19This new misogyny still very much undermines women, and it accomplishes this in several ways. First, the majority of feminine people are women, so by default they make up the largest class of those who are targeted by antifeminine sentiment. Second, our concept of femininity doesn’t merely affect how we “do” our own gender expression—it is also an expectation or assumption that we project onto other people’s bodies and behaviors. Therefore, while an individual woman may purposefully eschew femininity in her appearance and actions, she cannot escape the fact that other people will project feminine assumptions and expectations upon her simply because they associate femininity with femaleness. In her book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women , Virginia Valian makes a strong case that what has come to be known as the “glass ceiling”—the fact that women, regardless of their skills and merits, tend not to advance as far in their careers as similarly qualified men—is best explained by the fact that all people project feminine assumptions and expectations onto women and masculine ones onto men.20 This, of course, favors men, since masculinity is by default seen as “strong,” “natural,” and “aggressive” while femininity is seen as “weak,” “contrived,” and “passive.”

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Most LGB groups have long since added Ts to the ends of their acronyms. And while there was a time when trans-inclusion debates only took place on the outskirts of the queer community, they now take place in workplaces and courthouses all across the United States. In the last twenty years, nine states (Minnesota, Rhode Island, New Mexico, California, Maine, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, and New Jersey) and scores of cities and counties across the country have extended their nondiscrimination laws to explicitly include transgender people.10 It’s downright embarrassing that so many folks within the queer women’s community, who generally pride themselves on their progressive politics, have managed to fall behind Peoria, Illinois, and El Paso, Texas, in recognizing and respecting trans people’s gender identities.But trans-woman-exclusion in lesbian and women-only spaces is not merely a trans rights issue—if it were, I would consider it to be important, but I probably would not have devoted so much of my time and energy to it. The main reason why trans-woman-exclusion evokes such passion and frustration in me is precisely because it is both anti-trans and antifeminist. And as a feminist, it gravely disturbs me that other self-described feminists are so willing to overlook or purposefully ignore how inherently sexist trans-woman-exclusion policies and politics are: They favor trans men over trans women, they rampantly objectify trans female bodies, and they privilege trans women’s appearances, socialization, and the sex others assigned to us at birth over our persons, our minds, and our identities.And what saddens me even more than the irrational trans-misogynistic fear and hatred displayed by the vocal minority who most adamantly oppose our inclusion is the apathy of the silent majority of queer women and feminists who enable that prejudice: those who continue to attend women’s events that exclude trans women; those who excuse or choose not to confront antifeminist/anti-transwoman comments and actions made by members of their own community; those who tacitly give credence to antifeminist/anti-transwoman rhetoric by referring to the issue of trans-woman-exclusion as a “controversy” or a “debate.” I would submit to them that there has never been a legitimate debate regarding this issue, as the overwhelming majority of dialogues and discourses on this subject have taken place among cissexual women in the absence of any trans women.Perhaps the most naive and condescending refrain apologists for the trans-woman-exclusionists make is that these apologists are working hard to change these women-only organizations and spaces from within. This is a seriously flawed notion. If you look back at history, there has not been a single instance where people have overcome a deeply entrenched prejudice without first being forced to interact with the people they detest.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In the years just before my transition, when I was living as a male who was open and comfortable with my own feminine inclinations, I regularly experienced gender anxiety from other people over the most trivial things. On more than one occasion, I was questioned about the fact that I had a bright red umbrella (“Is it your girlfriend’s?” or “Are you just borrowing it?”). I was also interrogated regarding my tendency to color-coordinate my T-shirts and sneakers (“Is it just a coincidence or do you make them match on purpose?” or “Why would you do that?”). Another time, a friend asked me to hold her purse for a minute and then ostracized me for strapping it onto my shoulder (“I asked you to hold it, not to wear it!”). And I was regularly subjected to strange looks and comments for using words like “cute,” “adorable,” or “pretty” in a nonsarcastic way. I have hundreds of anecdotes like these—of people commenting, critiquing, and expressing concern over even the slightest manifestations of my femininity, given that I was male-bodied. Unfortunately, I have found that many women fail to appreciate effemimania as a very real and pervasive form of traditional sexism, one that oppressively restricts and undermines feminine gender expression in male-bodied people. During a question and answer session at a gender-themed event I participated in, a trans woman brought up the intense ridicule a man can face for the simple act of wearing a pink tie. The audience, who was made up predominantly of people who were socialized female, laughed at this remark in what seemed to me to be a highly unsympathetic way, as though they believed that the hypothetical man in question suffered from some irrational form of male paranoia. This sort of thinking not only makes invisible the role that women often play in employing and propagating effemimania (in fact, all of the effemimanic remarks I described in the previous paragraph were made by women), but entirely dismisses the severity of this form of sexism. In my five years of living as a woman—one who very rarely wears makeup, who regularly dresses like a tomboy, who often goes long periods of time without shaving her legs or armpits, who sometimes curses like a sailor, who is sometimes very physically active, and who is unafraid to take on supposedly masculine tasks such as using tools, lifting heavy boxes, etc.—I have not experienced a single gender-anxious comment or critique regarding my masculine gender expression that has even come close to the level of intensity or condescension that I regularly received for my feminine expressions back when I was perceived as male. Effemimania is not merely a phenomenon that affects adults, but rather one that begins early in childhood; this is highlighted by a recent study carried out by Emily Kane, who examined parental responses to gender nonconformity in their preschool children.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  The crux of the problem is that the words “pass” and “passing” are active verbs. So when we say that a transsexual is “passing,” it gives the false impression that they are the only active participant in this scenario (i.e., the transsexual is working hard to achieve a certain gendered appearance and everyone else is passively being duped or not duped by the transsexual’s “performance”). However, I would argue that the reverse is true: The public is the primary active participant by virtue of their incessant need to gender every person they see as either female or male. The transsexual can react to this situation in one of two ways: They can either try to live up to public expectations about maleness and femaleness in an attempt to fit in and avoid stigmatization, or they can disregard public expectations and simply be themselves. However, if they choose the latter, the public will still judge them based on whether they appear female or male and, of course, others may still accuse them of “passing,” even though they have not actively done anything. Thus, the active role played by those who compulsively distinguish between women and men (and who discriminate between transsexuals and cissexuals) is made invisible by the concept of “passing.” It should be mentioned that this view of “passing” is further supported by the use of the word with regards to other social class issues. For instance, a gay man can “pass” for straight, or a fair-skinned person of color can “pass” for white. Sometimes people work hard to “pass,” and other times they don’t try at all. Either way, the one thing that remains consistent is that the word “pass” is used to shift the blame away from the majority group’s prejudice and toward the minority person’s presumed motives and actions (which explains why people who “pass” are often accused of “deception” or “infiltration” if they are ever found out). It has been my experience that most cissexuals are absolutely obsessed about whether transsexuals “pass” or not. From clinical and academic accounts to TV, movies, and magazine articles, cissexuals spend an exorbitant amount of energy indulging their fascination regarding what transsexuals “do”—the medical procedures, how we modify our behaviors, etc.—in order to “pass” as our identified sex.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  It is offensive that so many people feel that it is okay to publicly refer to transsexuals as being “pre-op” or “post-op” when it would so clearly be degrading and demeaning to regularly describe all boys and men as being either “circumcised” or “uncircumcised.” While the specific details of transsexual-related medical procedures should be readily available for those contemplating sex reassignment, such information is neither relevant nor necessary for one to understand the experiences and perspectives of trans people. After all, while my physical transition occurred primarily over a period of a year and a half—a mere fraction of my life—what has remained constant and pervasive (both pre-, during, and post-transition) has been the resistance and prejudice that I have faced from those who are not transgender, those who become irrationally uncomfortable or disturbed by my gender expression and/or female identity, and those who presume that their identified gender is more natural or valid than my own. For this reason, I believe that one cannot begin to fully understand transsexuality without thoroughly examining and critiquing the prejudices and presumptions of the non-transsexual majority. So although I will be discussing transsexuals throughout this book, I will also be spending a great deal of time discussing the beliefs and attitudes common among cissexuals —that is, people who have only ever experienced their subconscious sex and physical sex as being aligned. Similarly, people who are not transgender may be described as being cisgender (although I will be using this term less often, since the focus of this book is on transsexual women rather than the transgender population as a whole). 3 I prefer these terms, but I occasionally use the synonymous terms non-transsexual and non-transgender . Some might feel that all of these trans- and gender-related terms I’ve introduced are overwhelming or confusing. And others, particularly those in the fields of gender and queer studies, might dismiss much of this language as contributing to a “reverse discourse”—that is, by describing myself as a transsexual and creating trans-specific terms to describe my experiences, I am simply reinforcing the same distinction between transsexuals and cissexuals that has marginalized me in the first place. My response to both of these arguments is the same: I do not believe that transsexuals and cissexuals are inherently different from one another. But the vastly different ways in which we are perceived and treated by others, and the way those differences impact our unique physical and social experiences, lead many transsexuals to see and understand gender very differently than our cissexual counterparts. And while transsexuals are extremely familiar with cissexual perspectives of gender (as they dominate in our culture), most cissexuals remain largely unfamiliar with trans perspectives.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  According to this myth, trans women do not “prey” on men so much as we “lure” them, by turning ourselves into sexual objects that no red-blooded man can resist. Framing the matter this way not only relieves men of any responsibility for their own sexual actions, but also prevents them from being cast in the role of sexual object or prey—an inherently subordinate position. Further, this tactic insinuates that trans women’s physical transitions are centered on the desires of men, in much the same way that people presume that women who wear highly feminine or revealing outfits do so not for themselves, but in order to attract male attention. This point is crucial: If trans women were seen as changing our sex primarily because we wanted to be female (as is generally the case), then MTF transitioning would become both a self-empowering act and one that potentially empowers femaleness itself. However, the assumption that we change our sex in order to attract men essentially sexualizes our motives for transitioning, a move that disempowers trans women and femaleness while reinforcing the idea that heterosexual male desire is central. This sexualization of trans women’s motives not only belittles our own female identities, but also implies that women as a whole have no value beyond their ability to be sexualized by men. This tendency to focus on heterosexual male desire also dominates mainstream discourse on the MTF transitioning process itself. For instance, in the media, it seems that the most commonly described effect of MTF hormone therapy is that it causes trans women to develop breasts or “curves.” While this is certainly true, trans women themselves do not always see this specific change as the most important result of hormone therapy. Most of us tend to cite the more psychological and emotional effects of estrogen, or the fact that it facilitates our being perceived by others as female in a more general way, as being the primary positive outcome of hormone therapy. Similarly, most people assume that trans women undergo bottom surgery not because we want to have a clitoris and vagina, or that we wish to align our physical bodies with our own subconscious self-image, but instead because we wish to be penetrated by a man. Of course, many trans women (like their cissexual counterparts) are attracted to men and wish to have sex with them, but it’s demeaning to suggest that any woman’s physical femaleness (whether trans or cis) exists only to experience male penetration.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Feelings were a luxury of the young, or someone much stronger than me—someone more at ease with being human. It was too late for tears. I was to keep going, to move forward on the same track in spite of life’s unsatisfying lifeness. I was not to ask where I was going or if it was where I really wanted to go. I was not to ask if I was actually going anywhere at all. But now, somehow, I was sobbing. And so began the melancholy. The days of crying, without notice, in inopportune situations: at work, at the bank, in the Whole Foods checkout line when I saw his favorite protein powder and my spirit gagged at the loss of him. It was as though the powder were him, or transubstantiated him. So strange to know a person’s favorite protein powder, their favorite flavor (vanilla almond), and then just have them gone. I didn’t call or text. A Pisces and never good at restraint, this time I was dedicated to punitive silence and making him want. He will be back soon, I told myself. He has to be. Four days went by. I heard nothing. I grew enraged. Eight years and this was all? No inquiry into how I was doing? I could have been dead. On the sixth day he called me. He wanted to see how I was holding up. “Not great,” I said. “You?” “Terrible,” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping.” Thank God, I thought. “I know,” I said. “This is so silly. I think we should stop this. Enough is enough.” “I need a little more time,” he said. “Can’t you just come over?” I pleaded. “I don’t think that’s a great idea right now,” he said. “Maybe in a few weeks?” “A few weeks?!” I said. “How much longer is this going to go on for?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I love you.” “Fuck you!” I yelled, and hung up the phone. Then I texted him. i’m sorry i’m just hurt and scared forgive me? i love you too He wrote: let’s just take this time 2. I have always felt that it would be good to be a man. Not only have I always wanted to have my own dick—just to walk around feeling that weight between my legs, that power—but I have longed to escape the time pressures that my body has put on me. I hated the German man on Abbot Kinney for having that, no time pressure. I hated the woman too, for being so young, for having so much time left to be hot and maybe someday have a baby. I had never wanted a baby. I never felt the desire so many women describe that suddenly hits them. Having just turned thirty-eight, I had been waiting and waiting for that desire to overtake me, but it didn’t.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  There is absolutely nothing right. You cannot believe you were ever captivated by them in the first place. “I don’t feel happy,” I said. “There are other places I’d rather be too,” he said. “I’m serious,” I said. “I think we need to talk. About us.” “Now?” I watched him so at ease with himself, the fat in the middle, the various layers of padding around the chin, the chin disappearing into a soufflé of neck meat. His chin area looked like it was a second mouth and I imagined it talking. What was it saying? Feed me , it said. I don’t give a fuck if I’m attractive or not. I don’t need to. I have options. All of him said that. From his nervous laughter whenever I had brought up marriage—or even moving in together—the years of dismissals, the claims that I wouldn’t want that either, to the disappearance of the chiseled, handsome stranger I first met at a party into a honeybear I came to know and love into another kind of stranger: a physical manifestation of time and letting oneself go eclipsing both the stranger and the honeybear until they all but disappeared. I felt irate. How dare he not give a fuck? What a luxury, the luxury of a man. The luxury of someone who looked at the ravages of time and went, “Eh.” And that is when I said it. “Maybe we should just break up.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was an empty threat, something I tossed out. It was how I felt, but it was only a bit of it—a percentage. Maybe 22 percent. That 22 percent was loud right now. It wanted to punctuate the heavy evening ennui, the waiting-to-be-rescued. I wanted drama if only to sever the nothingness of things breaking, the heaviness of having to live in the world, dependent on things, dependent on others, waiting for roadside assistance with a talking chin. I wanted to have him try to stop me, to intervene. Maybe I wanted to hurt him a little bit. Mostly I wanted to hear him say no. But he didn’t say no. He didn’t say no at all. He looked at me, sighed, and said calmly, “I think you might be right.” And with that the chins disappeared. And all I saw now were his strong shoulders, his deep blue eyes. So many times when we were fucking, his belly bouncing off me, I tried to look only at his eyes—to conjure the attraction I had felt when we first met. Now, suddenly, it was all I could see. “Or at least,” he said, “maybe we can try a separation for a little while.” Now my words had had the opposite effect of my intentions. Or maybe not opposite, exactly. With Jamie taking the bait, but running with it in a completely unexpected direction, he had certainly put a pin in my boredom and annoyance.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Very angry he grew, and his dinner fermented, dilating his stomach and causing discomfort, so that his wife became anxious about him . ‘Now don’t ee go worryin’, Arth-thur,’ she coaxed; ‘us be old, me and you, and the world be progressin’.’ ‘It be goin’ to the devil, that’s what it be doin’!’ groaned Williams, rubbing his stomach. To make matters worse, Sir Philip’s behaviour was that of a schoolboy with some horrid new contraption. He was caught by his stud-groom lying flat on his back with his feet sticking out beneath the bonnet of the motor, and when he emerged there was soot on his cheek-bones, on his hair, and even on the tip of his nose. He looked terribly sheepish, and as Williams said later to his wife: ‘It were somethin’ aw-ful to see ’im all mucked up, and ’im such a neat gentleman, and ’im in a filthy old coat of that Burton’s, and that Burton agrinnin’ at me and just pointin’, silent, because the master couldn’t see ’im, and the master a-callin’ up familiar-like to Burton: “I say! She’s got somethin’ all wrong with ’er exhaust pipe!” and Burton acontradictin’ the master: “It’s that piston,” says ’e, as cool as yer please.’ Nor was Stephen less thrilled by the car than was her father. Stephen made friends with the execrable Burton, and Burton, who was only too anxious to gain allies, soon started to teach her the parts of the engine; he taught her to drive too, Sir Philip being willing, and off they would go, the three of them together, leaving Williams to glare at the disappearing motor. ‘And ’er such a fine ’orse-woman and all!’ he would grumble, rubbing a disconsolate chin. It is not too much to say that Williams felt heart-broken, he was like a very unhappy old baby; quite infantile he was in his fits of bad temper, in his mouthings and his grindings of toothless gums.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  This tendency to dismiss feminine women is eerily similar to the behavior of some lesbian-feminists in the 1970s who arrogantly claimed that they were more righteous feminists than heterosexual women because the latter group was “fucking with the oppressor.”17 It is an extraordinarily convenient tactic to artificialize, and even demean, an inclination (such as femininity or heterosexuality) when you personally are not inclined toward it. Indeed, this is exactly what straight bigots do when they dismiss queer forms of gender and sexual expression as “unnatural.” When we feminists stoop to the level of policing gender and start inventing etiologies to explain why some women adopt “unnatural” feminine forms of expression, there’s little to distinguish us from the sexist forces we claim to be fighting against in the first place.While femininity is in many ways influenced, shaped, and enforced by society, to say that it is entirely “artificial” or merely a “performance” is patronizing toward those for whom femininity simply feels right. Indeed, one would have to have a rather grim view of the female population to believe that a majority of us could so easily be “brainwashed” or “coerced” into enthusiastically adopting an entirely contrived or wholly artificial set of gender expressions. In fact, it seems incomprehensible that so many women could so actively gravitate toward femininity unless there was something about it that resonated with them on a profound level. This becomes even more obvious when considering feminine folks who exhibit no desire whatsoever to fit into straight society, such as femme dykes (who proudly express their femininity despite being historically marginalized within the lesbian movement because of it) and “nelly queens” (who remain fiercely feminine despite the gay male obsession with praising butchness and deriding “effeminacy”).18The idea that “femininity is artificial” is also blatantly misogynistic. While a handful of theorists in the field of gender studies have more recently begun to focus on how masculinity is constructed, the lion’s share of feminist attention, deconstruction, and denigration has been directed squarely at femininity. There is an obvious reason for this. Just as woman is man’s “other,” so too is femininity masculinity’s “other.” Under such circumstances, negative connotations like “artificial,” “contrived,” and “frivolous” become built into our understanding of femininity—indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as “natural,” “practical,” and “uncomplicated.” Those feminists who single out women’s dress shoes, clothing, and hairstyles to artificialize necessarily leave unchallenged the notion that their masculine counterparts are “natural” and “practical.” This is the same male-centered approach that allows the appearances and behaviors of men who wish to charm or impress others to seem “authentic” while the reciprocal traits expressed by women are dismissed as “feminine wiles.”

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  This premise underlies Jay Leno’s infamous question to Hugh Grant: “What were you thinking?” 4 It’s why Grant and fellow celebrity Eddie Murphy are still able to star in films for Disney while the trans prostitutes they allegedly sought out are reduced to cinematic novelties: tasteless jokes in teen comedies, bad Lou Reed anecdotes in art films produced by Andy Warhol wannabes, or as examples of urban decay in police dramas set on sordid and seedy city streets. Transgender women are portrayed as deceivers so that rabid heterosexuals can turn a blind eye to the transsexual porn ads that litter the back of men’s magazines like Hustler and Penthouse, so that mainstream moviegoers can watch The Crying Game and act surprised to find out that the woman who performs in the drag bar happens to have a penis. “Deception” is the scarlet letter that trans people are made to wear so that everybody else can claim innocence. This is why the police, lawyers, and press who worked on the Gwen Araujo case ignored the multiple sources who insisted that Gwen’s killers knew she was transgender to begin with. 5 It’s why nobody ever questioned how next-to-impossible it would be for two of Gwen’s killers to have had anal sex with her without ever coming across her genitals. Nobody was willing to even consider the possibility that Gwen’s murderers knowingly had sex with her. Why challenge our culture’s myopic view of male sexuality when it’s so easy to blame it all on one deceiving tranny? And why question the psychotic paranoia with which many men defend their masculinity when it’s so convenient to trash one young trans person’s gender identity? The truth is that the myth of transsexual deception is merely a ruse, a smoke screen designed to hide societal complicity in this tragedy. Most people want to believe that Gwen’s murder was an isolated incident, an egregious act committed by a handful of young men who were provoked into doing the unthinkable. That way they need not confront the fact that half of the hung jury was more willing to identify with male homophobic hysteria than with an innocent transgender teenager. They need not examine how the news coverage and commentary, articles, editorials, and analyses invariably chose to view this crime through the murderers’ eyes, or through a grieving mother’s tears, for fear of what might happen if they dared to imagine themselves as Gwen, a young trans woman they so desperately wanted to believe was nothing like them.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Serano gave me vital tools to account for my experiences, which allowed me to confront people whose treatment of me changed after they found out I’m trans, and point them towards the direction of treating me and other trans women better.” —Meredith Talusan, “The Lasting Transgender Legacy of Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl ,” BuzzFeed “An absorbing and essential achievement in both theory and biography.” — Washington City Paper “Julia Serano is a careful and astute critic of the ways that trans women have been stereotyped and dismissed in popular culture, feminism, and psychology, and she repeatedly surprised me with her razor-sharp observations of the pervasive hatred of trans women and all differently gendered people. This is an important text for gender studies classes, as well as for therapists, journalists, and anybody who’d like to keep updated as a sex radical.” —Patrick Califia, author of Sex Changes Introduction “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” —Audre Lorde When I first told people that I was working on a book based on my experiences and perspectives as a transsexual woman, many of them immediately assumed that I was writing an autobiography (rather than a political or historical account, a work of fiction, or a collection of personal essays). Perhaps they imagined that I would write one of those confessional tell-alls that non-trans people seem to constantly want to hear from transsexual women, one that begins with my insistence that I have always been a “woman trapped inside a man’s body”; one that distorts my desire to be female into a quest for feminine pursuits; one that explains the ins and outs of sex reassignment surgery and hormones in gory detail; one that completely avoids discussions about what it is like to be treated as a woman and how that compares to how I was treated as a male; one that whitewashes away all of the prejudices I face for being transsexual; a book that ends not with me becoming an outspoken trans activist or feminist, but with the consummation of my womanhood in the form of my first sexual experience with a man. I am not surprised that many would assume that I was simply writing yet another variation of this archetype.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  This is why plastic surgery shows rarely depict people who are conventionally attractive from the outset, even though such people certainly represent a significant portion of those who seek out plastic surgery. Nor do they follow subjects who merely want a nose job or a tummy tuck. Rather, these programs almost always depict people of either average or less-than-average attractiveness, and who undergo multiple procedures at once, thus creating the most dramatic and extensive physical change possible. Similarly, the subjects of sex reassignment programs rarely ever begin the process as very feminine males or as very masculine females, even though many pre-transition trans people fall into these categories. Showing such people transitioning to become trans women and trans men, respectively, would not only make their transformation seem less dramatic; it would give the impression that sex reassignment merely confirms the subject’s “natural” gender identity, as opposed to “artificially” altering that person’s biological sex. Perhaps for this reason, the most commonly depicted subject on these programs is a trans woman who starts out as a seemingly masculine male. In addition to the reasons for the media’s focus on trans women rather than trans men (which I discussed in chapter 2 ), there are additional physical reasons to account for this phenomenon. Trans women often have more difficulties “passing” as their identified sex than trans men do, not only because of limitations of the MTF transition process in reversing some of the irreparable effects of prolonged exposure to testosterone, but because people in our culture predominantly rely on male (rather than female) cues when determining the sex of other people. 2 Therefore, some trans women require more procedures if they wish to be taken seriously as their identified sex. Sex reassignment TV programs I have seen have followed trans women not only through electrolysis, hormone replacement therapy, and bottom surgery (which are all fairly common), but also somewhat less common procedures, such as top surgery to increase the size of their breasts, tracheal shaves to reduce the size of their Adam’s apples, and voice lessons to overcome their deep voices. Such shows also frequently depict trans women working with movement coaches and fashion consultants, even though it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of trans women never engage in such a step. These programs’ concentration on trans people who undergo multiple medical procedures, or who take lessons to help them “pass” as their identified sex, tends to make invisible the many trans men and women who “pass” rather easily after hormone replacement therapy alone, or who choose not to undergo all of the procedures commonly associated with transsexuality.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  However, the majority of the transgender people I know understand that our experiential gender is potentially fluid and often changes over time as we accumulate new experiences. I have found that transsexuals in particular are often acutely aware of this fact, having experienced the dramatic changes in our body feelings, anatomies, personal relationships, and histories that typically accompany social and physical transitioning. Personally, I find that the concept of experiential gender not only helps me make sense of my own transition, but it gives me an appreciation of the inherent limits in my ability to understand or speak on behalf of other people’s genders. While I may have experienced a wider variety of aspects of social and hormonal gender than most people, these experiences are still far outweighed by the vast multitude of gendered feelings and experiences that I have not experienced. Therefore, it would be both ignorant and arrogant for me to project my limited experience onto other people’s gendered lives and bodies. This is precisely what frustrates me about those cissexuals who are most bothered when trans women say that we feel like women. They assume that we are somehow trying to claim to know how other women feel, when in reality all we are saying is that the identity of woman most resonates with our own experiential gender. And by insisting that we trans women cannot possibly know what it’s like to “feel like a woman,” they’re the ones being presumptuous, both by arrogantly assuming that other women experience femaleness the way they do and by implying that they know enough about how trans women feel on the inside to claim that we do not legitimately experience ourselves as women. Their claims that they somehow understand “womanhood” better than trans women do by virtue of having been born and socialized female is just as naive and arrogant as my claiming to understand “womanhood” better because, unlike most women, I have had a male experience to compare it to. Any claim that one has superior knowledge about womanhood is fraught with gender entitlement and erases the infinite different ways for people to experience their own femaleness. There are countless experiences that can shape a woman’s gendered experiences: being socialized as a girl (or not), experiencing menstruation and menopause (or not), becoming pregnant and giving birth (or not), becoming a mother (or not), having a career outside of the home (or not), having a husband (or a wife or neither), and so on. Women’s lives are also greatly shaped by additional factors such as race, age, ability, sexual orientation, economic class, and so on.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “I was talking to a friend – well, a friend I’ve gone on some dates with, we used to live in the same building, that’s how I know him,” I say, rambling. “I don’t care how you know him, Mom, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were dating. What else are you keeping from me?” she asks, her voice rising. “It’s not that I’ve been keeping this from you, I didn’t feel the need to tell you. I’m entitled to privacy, and this is private,” I say, attempting to delineate boundaries for us where they had not existed before. “I hate being here so much,” she says angrily. “Home doesn’t feel like home anymore. You tell me so much about you and Dad, it feels unfair for you to pick and choose what parts of your life you’re going to share with me.” “Are you angry that I’m dating or angry that I didn’t tell you?” I ask. She pauses, the fury and hurt in her luminous eyes apparent even in the dark. “Both. It’s too soon. You’ve been single for like five minutes,” she says, rolling her eyes. “It may be too soon for you, but it’s not for me. For the record, it’s been nine months. The alternative is that I wallow in misery and stay home. You don’t have to be part of my finding my way, but you might consider what the alternative would look like,” I say. “Mom, I want you to be happy, I really do,” she says, miserably. “So what should I do? What works for me or what works for you? You’re off at school living your life as you should be. Do you want me to sit home alone on Saturday nights, waiting up for you on the few occasions you’re here, so I can hear about the life you’re living while mine has stopped?” “Yes! That’s exactly what I want,” she shouts. I understand that beneath her irrational words are rational feelings of anger, hurt and betrayal. “I’m sorry, Daisy, I know this is really hard,” I say, watching her back as she walks away and slams my door behind her, but my voice is more condescending than I intend for it to be, as if there are things she just can’t understand and I’m tired of feeling I have to explain them to her. I know it would likely defuse her anger if I were to follow her and wrap her in a hug, but I’m too angry myself and who is here to defuse my anger? If I am to be the repository of Daisy’s rage, then Michael has to be the repository of mine. It all has to stop somewhere and it seems fair to me that he should be the end of the line. I text him, tapping away at my phone furiously, “Daisy is brokenhearted, so upset that I’m dating. In her mind, I may as well be having an affair.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  * I arrive home before Michael and Georgia. He was indulgent with the kids even before we separated but now that he’s got only one child who will talk to him, all the spoiling goes into her. I’ve warned him that buying her treats all the time and taking her from one activity to the next is having a negative effect on her. When she’s with me she constantly asks, what are we doing today? Can we go to the arcade? Can we go skating? Bowling? Daddy lets me have bubble tea and ice cream. Daddy doesn’t care about bedtime. Daddy is more fun. By the time she returns home to me, I have to run her through a detox program. Now that he’s got his hands on her, I can only imagine how he’s pampering her. I’m seething, not only because I fear he’s ruining her, but also because I feel I have a right to be with her after an absence and sharing her like this feels patently unfair. She’s mine , I think possessively, as if I’m doing him a favor by granting him access to her, and anxiously peer out the window waiting for them to return. Didn’t all those years glued to my kids’ sides entitle me to VIP privileges now when I want them? Then comes my silver lining: a text from #3 suggesting that if I’m still available tomorrow, he will pack a picnic and we can head over to Tanglewood to listen to classical music and read the Sunday NYTimes . I am astonished. I’ve never been with a man who cooked or prepared food for me. The idea that someone would take care of this aspect of an outing is a wonderful novelty. To add to that the suggestion of having this kind of adult time, to be with someone in a companionable way coexisting as we listen to music and read the newspaper without children around: mind-blowing. I check the weather report and am dismayed to see that the heatwave we are in the midst of has a couple more days in its clutches. Now instead of picturing us leisurely reading side by side on a grassy lawn, I am worrying about the lack of shade at Tanglewood, how we’ll be smudged from the newsprint that will rub off on our sweaty fingers and smacking at mosquitoes that will be feasting on us. I confess my practical concerns to him despite the fact that his plan represents my idea of a perfect day, and he proposes a compromise: we will picnic by the river on his property, where we will be guaranteed a shady spot, while listening to the Tanglewood concert on the radio, and he will provide me with a hazmat suit for the bugs. I am practically swooning. We set a date for the next afternoon. In the meantime, I have been invited to a dinner party tonight by a mom I recently met at Georgia’s camp.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  When I realized one day that he didn’t come to me anymore asking if we could move on, that time seemed to only make him angrier at me after even the most trivial argument, I was alarmed. I tried to gently probe, asking why he was upset with me so much of the time. He insisted that he wasn’t, that he had hit a stressful patch at work and didn’t want to add to my daily stress by sharing it with me. “You know how it goes with work stuff,” he said with a knowing look, and I nodded my head. I did know. He had owned his own business since the end of graduate school, so I was well-acquainted with the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life, how we could be drawing from our line of credit one month and then the next flying away for a family vacation. I dropped the subject. One evening, a few days later, he forgot to pick Georgia up from her afterschool class. I was furious at him, upset that Georgia had been left alone with the building’s handyman after everyone else had left and she was still waiting to be picked up. When Michael arrived home later, he defended himself before I could even formulate words from my rage. “Before you start harping about this, tell me when I have ever done this before,” he seethed. “You haven’t, but you’re late to pick her up all the time,” I said tersely. “But when have I ever forgotten?” he asked. “You’ve never forgotten because I’ve never given you the chance to. I didn’t remind you today because I thought you could handle it on your own and look at what happened.” He was livid, all but foaming at the mouth, and slammed his fork down on the kitchen counter. A small piece of white marble flew up into the air. “You just chipped the counter,” I calmly stated. “Good. Now every time you see this chip you can remember what an unbearable nag you are and maybe you’ll think twice before you open your mouth to complain again,” he shouted and stormed out of the room. Daisy had been quietly doing homework on the couch in the living room, and her eyes caught mine in horror. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked. “He feels guilty about forgetting Georgia and he’s very stressed at work.” A few minutes later, she piped up again, “Mom, do you think Dad could be having an affair?” “What? No!” I said, laughing. “Dad can barely keep track of us, how on earth would he keep track of a secret lover? You’ve been watching too much TV.” * The next morning, Michael was even colder and more hostile. I called him into the family room where I was working through a pile of mail and asked if we could talk before he left for the day.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  There can be no legitimate accusations of “divisiveness” in an alliance, as differences of opinion would be expected from the start. Thinking in terms of alliances can encourage us to move beyond the single goal of creating safe queer/trans spaces, to recognize that, in reality, there is no such thing as a “safe space.” After all, the very notion of safety is often predicated on a presumed and exclusionary sense of “sameness” and “oneness.” And unlike subversivism, which fosters a grim and belittling view of the heterosexual, gender-normative majority, alliance-based gender activism recognizes that the only way we will change society is by engaging the mainstream public and working with, rather than against, our straight allies. If we hope to build alliances that are respectful of all queer and transgender perspectives, then we must stop talking about the gender binary system, as if there is only one. As a trans woman, I deal with lots of gender binaries: male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, cissexual/transsexual, cisgender/transgender, and so on. As someone who is marginalized in queer/trans spaces for not being “subversive” or “transgressive” enough, I find that calls to “shatter the (male/female) gender binary” sound hollow. And when cissexual queers try to frame all forms of gender/sexual discrimination in terms of “heterosexist gender norms,” they deny the fact that, as a transsexual woman, I experience way more cissexist and trans-misogynistic animosity and condescension from members of my own lesbian community than I ever have from my straight friends and acquaintances. The truth is that whenever we enter a different space, or speak with a different person, we are forced to deal with a somewhat different set of binaries and assumptions. Indeed, my experience living in the San Francisco Bay Area—where most straight people I know are very comfortable with queerness, yet many queer people I know harbor subversivist attitudes toward straightness—makes it clear that there needs to be a more general strategy to challenge all forms of sexism, not just the typical or obvious ones. Rather than focusing on “shattering the gender binary,” I believe we should turn our attention instead to challenging all forms of gender entitlement, the privileging of one’s own perceptions, interpretations, and evaluations of other people’s genders over the way those people understand themselves. After all, whenever we assign values to other people’s genders and sexualities—whether we call them subversive or conservative, cool or uncool, normal or abnormal, natural or unnatural—we are automatically creating or reaffirming some kind of hierarchy.